Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Crows of Death?

What do we know about crows? There can be busy all the time... An Indian proverb asks, "How can a crow sleep soundly when the figs are ripe?"

Really? Mere figs or departing souls?

On Tuesday, 20th November this year, I was about to drive to an important engagement about five miles away in the pouring rain and heavy thunderstorm when I happened to glance up in the sky outside my Piasau home. The time was 2:00 P.M. sharp. (By coincidence, my antique grandfather clock died at 2:00 o'clock over 20 years ago and my dad passed away at 2:00 P.M).

Lo and behold! I was astonished to notice sixteen black crows all aligned on one of the electricity cables high above the ground. They were perched on the cable which was just above the entrance to my home.

Having seen a crow once in my garden before a close friend was killed in an accident on a rainy day, I wondered if it was again an omen of impending death of someone close to us.

I grabbed my video camera and started recording the unusual sight.

From sixteen of them, the crows became fewer when six flew off, followed by four and then all of them flew off.

I took my video camera and uploaded everything into my PC. Everything else came out well except the crow video! Disappointingly, nothing could be seen!

That wasn't the end of my story. I grabbed a pen and tried to figure out the significance of the sixteen crows... and here's what I worked out mathematically: 16 crows; 10 remained; 6 remained & then all left. No. of crows which flew off each time: 16-6= 10; 10-6=4 & then all left.In the Holy Bible, the number '6 6 6' is considered the devil's number and for the Chinese the number '4' is a bad numeral as it sounds like 'death' in the Mandarin language.

Yes, need I say that I canceled my important engagement on the spot with my hand-phone?

Now, today is Thursday 22th November, 2007 and I have just learnt that my neighbour, whom I dubbed 'neighbour from hell' in an earlier posting, has lost his eccentric weird wife. The wake is being prepared with lots of burning joss sticks, hell money, temporally house extension and hell flags as I post this entry. Moments ago, her casket was carried into the house.

Tonight the Buddhist mantras will be sung throughout the night ...

Here is some of the interesting information that I found at Wilkipedia, the great online encyclopedia about crows:

"Crows, and especially ravens, often feature in European legends or mythology as portents or harbingers of doom or death, because of their dark plumage, unnerving calls, and tendency to eat carrion. They are commonly thought to circle above scenes of death such as battles. The Child ballad The Three Ravens depicts three ravens discussing whether they can eat a dead knight, but finds that his hawk, his hound, and his true love prevent them; in the parody version The TwaCorbies, these guards have already forgotten the dead man, and the ravens can eat their fill. Their depiction of evil has also led to some exaggeration of their appetite. In modern films such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Omen II and Exorcist: TheBeginning, crows are shown tearing out people's eyes while they are still alive".

This is a cartoon drawing of the late Brandon Lee, son of the late great martial arts master and JeetKwan Do founder, Bruce Lee in a scene as 'the crow' in a graveyard. He was the star in the production of the movie, The Crow in 1994 when he was killed accidentally as the prop gun fired a live bullet, instead of a blank bullet into his body.

Brandon used to drive around Hollywood in a former hearse limousine that used to carry the dead to their final resting places.

This the grave of Brandon with a mysterious philosophical message in a cemetery in Seattle at Washington State, United States of America.